TheTexan
Member

Your first two sentences are pure speculation with absolutely no factual data to support them. Your last comment is just pure bullshit. But you already know that.

Now he’s praising the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909? I wonder if he knows that Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich was the very guy who organized the covert meeting on Jekyll Island that gave birth to the Federal Reserve Act? But I’m sur Aldrich had nothing but the best interests of the average American in mind when he helped craft that tariff act. Certainly there couldn’t have been any other motive from a stand-up guy like Aldrich, right? ETA: Aldrich was, in fact, the father in law of old John D. Rockefeller himself. Future vice president Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, his grandson, was actually named after him. At the time Aldrich was well known as a “Rockefeller man” in congress. He represented not his actual constituents but the Rockefeller financial empire. IIRC his reputation among real conservatives and liberty loving Americans was so bad that his involvement with the Federal Reserve Act had to be carefully concealed lest that revelation doom the bill’s chances. As I recall, he even pretended to oppose the bill in a successful effort to dupe enough Americans to go along with it to get it passed. He was a globalist, progressive scumbag and NOTHING he was ever involved in, including the tariff act bearing his name, was good for America or its people.

At best he’ll start quoting from Ian Fletcher’s book about how great tariffs are and how horrible free trade is. What he WON’T tell you is that Fletcher is actually on the board of a group called the Coalition For A Prosperous America, a lobbying group for a bunch of rent seeking corporations and industries seeking to enrich themselves unjustly at the expense of American consumers through tariffs and trade restrictions. Fletcher is nothing but a shill lobbyist and his book is just pro-protectionist propaganda. But you didn’t really expect any better, did you?

Can't debate rationally with those people. We conquer them, or we separate from them, but debating and coming to an agreed outcome seems simply out of the realm of possibility.

The benefits of free trade - to the extent they exist - are minimal at best. The consequences of free trade? Potentially a one world government and the elimination of sovereignty in all of its forms. Its not worth it.

If a business spends all their money on hookers and coke, it is indeed an equitable transaction with both sides benefiting. But that business is still gonna go out of business no matter how equitable it was. You just failed business 102. I welcome any attempts to disprove the scenario I linked. The scenario I have provided proves the above statement wrong. (that it is "undeniably" good)

The point was, a responsible adult will limit how many irresponsible trades they make. As an individual, irresponsible trades can look like paying exorbitant fees to get groceries delivered to you when the grocery store is 3 blocks away. I do this personally because I can afford it but it's expensive and addictive and even though I can afford it, it is still quite irresponsible as I'm not doing anything "productive" with the time I'm saving. I'm just being exceptionally lazy. These irresponsible trades destroy personal wealth. Or more accurately, that wealth gets transferred. When you buy hookers and coke, yes both sides benefit in terms of value, but only one side benefits in terms of wealth. The same thing happens at a national level. Nations can make irresponsible trades. If a nation sells its means of production, and then spends that money on consumption products - which is what this nation did - then that is an irresponsible trade. There is almost no such thing as "specialization" when it comes to countries the size of the US. There are very few products that other countries can produce better due to advantages other than simply labor cost. (Exceptions including, tropical produce, a few rare minerals, etc) I have proven that these labor-cost based trades can be detrimental to a country's economy. (See, the referenced link from earlier) I welcome any attempts to disprove it.

Commerce and trade in limited quantities is good. But when you start trading for things that you should (as a responsible adult, and/or nation) be producing yourself, that's when it starts doing more harm than good. If you inherit a fully functional corn farm from your grandparents, it would be extremely irresponsible to sell off the farm, spend your cash on hookers and coke, and then take on debt so you can afford corn to feed yourself with. That is what we have done as a nation, and that is what modern trade has taken the form of.

You are correct that in the last 400 years it has grown exponentially. Which then arrives at my point: the trade we have today is quantitatively and qualitatively different than anything we have seen in the past. The quantity is obviously much higher and the nature is similarly much different. In the past, international economic competitive advantage was largely based on regional abundances of raw materials. Today, international economic competitive advantage is largely based on differences in labor costs. It was never historically feasible to save money on labor by getting it built 6,000 miles away and then transporting it. It is far too early to say that trade is "good" for the economy. There are scenarios where trade is provably bad for an economy.* It also depends on how you define "the economy". If your interest is the economic outcome of the world as a whole, then yes, global trade is economically a good thing. If your interest is the economic outcome of your local economy, then no, it's not quite as clear as that (as proven in the scenario). It may very well be the case that modern trade, being based on short-term differences in labor costs vs other forms of economic advantage, is overall a detriment to a local economy. Even if we do accept that trade is an overall economic good, that still does not make it however an overall net good. There are cultural, sovereignty, and security costs that come at potentially a heavy price with full global economic integration. * (Scenario referenced above is at this link: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?566808-Tariffs-Are-A-War-On-American-Consumers&p=7231881&viewfull=1#post7231881)

Everything is subjective without an agreed upon framework of context. 1+1=2 is not objectively true without an agreed upon context. Superficially, the context required for that is the meaning of symbols, letters. Less superficially, the context requires an agreement of what constitutes identity. This context onion can be stripped further and further until there remains no objective context; it simply is what it is because we have agreed that it is as it is and we have no further means of proving or testing it. (See: Feynman's explanation of magnetism) Similarly, a properly developed "dictionary project" absolutely could be objectively tested - within an agreed upon context. This could look similar to a programming language. Programming languages work objectively within the context for which they are defined (namely: the selected compiler, and further, the bitwise operations at a hardware level). If you were to define "law" and "crime" within a framework that allows it to be tested, then yes, it can be tested. And yes that is circular. All of scientific testing is inevitably circular - it all exists within an untestable framework that allows it be tested.

As I understand it ending the fed is on his agenda, immediately following eliminating world hunger, ending poverty and curing cancer. Give the guy a break! He can’t do EVERYTHING all at once you know.

Case study: Japan Source: Googled "japan isolationism" and this was provided as an AI generated result. ============================================================================== Japan's isolationist period, known as Sakoku, lasted from 1639 to 1853. During this time, Japan was largely closed off from the rest of the world, with strict regulations on trade, travel, and information. The policy was intended to protect Japan's culture and stability, and to develop its own industries. Here are some of the effects of Japan's isolationist period: Cultural flourishing

People talk about ending the Fed and how that would solve so many problems. Well, if the US was only allowed to collect taxes through tariffs, that would solve just as many problems, if not more.

It's an ignorant statement to point out that the realities of travel and transportation meant that most trade was done locally/regionally and that most people who lived in an area were born within that region? You've got nothing but insults today. Worm crawl up your butt? Tax man send you a letter? How about you provide some substance to your retorts instead of blanket insults about ignorance.

Oh please. I love ta like a brother man, but it’schard to take ignorant comments like this seriously. Read a frekin’ history book ffs.

Heh, if you say so. I'm sure they were shipping 300,000 metric tons of oil across the ocean on a single ship back in the 1600's

Your initial statement is patently false. I don’t know where you get these ideas but history clearly demonstrates quite thevreverse.

Every society was an isolationist society before roughly the 1950's, just by the physical restrictions of travel. The world did just fine without having everybody in the world co-mingle with each other. This idea of full global economic and cultural integration is an extremely new, extremely untested (hint: does not look great so far) state of affairs.

Let me know when you’ve shrunk government back down to that size. Then, maybe, we can talk.

Please spare me your bullshit straw manning. My commentscwere a direct counterpoint to TheTexan advocating actual isolationism, nothing more. And also please spare us the bullshit lie that tariffs are the causitive agent behind American prosperity, and that free trade destroyed it. Only people naive enough to belive that protectionist shill Ian Fletcher fall for that crap.

Not to mention the fact that isolationist societies throughout history have almost always been backward, stagnant societies that usually suffered under some form of brutal, feudal dictatorships. It’s only been after they’ve abandoned their foolish isolationism that they were able to move in the direction of greater freedom and prosperity, although there are certainly no guarantees that the will/would.

Good :cool: For very similar reasons that I have isolated myself from other people as much as possible, I would want my nation to do the same :up: Fuck other people. Fuck other nations. They bring nothing but trouble. This world has become far too integrated with each other and it's brought nothing but harm to everyone from both an economic and liberty perspective. Bring on the isolationism.

That was back when people on the “right” actually had a decent, fundamental understanding of economics. Oh, and they actually opposed, you know, socialism.

I find curves to be more persuasive than angles, personally

I wish that were true. Ron Paul would have been president 2x in a row.

They'll either get a serious charge to stick, or they'll just kill him.

“Facts abd data” NEVER change ANYONE’S mind. You have to approach it from a different angle.

Well, this is gonna either 1 of 2 ways. It's either gonna get better (fat chance..) or it's gonna get worse. And the worse it gets, the more likely this country falls apart, which is possibly the best outcome we can expect. So, either way, it's gonna get better. Eventually :cool:

My suggestion is to just keep spreading division and hate. At some point somebody's gonna get pissed off enough to secede. If Trump does win by some miracle past the cheating, he probably will be assassinated though. Maybe that would be enough to get somebody to something.

I’m sure the people of East Timor, by some estimates as many as a third of were wiped out bu Suharto’s genocidal invasion and occupation which Carter fully supported with arms and other aid, will be ecstatic that he’s lived so long.